A tropical-storm watch was issued on Friday in the United States for central Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, where residents are still recovering from last year’s hurricanes. Arlene, the Atlantic hurricane season’s first named tropical storm, was centred about 16,09km south-southeast of the western tip of Cuba at 9am GMT.
A German court on Friday found three elderly men, known as the ”grandpa gang”, guilty of bank robbery and sentenced them to between nine and 12 years in prison. Over a 16-year period, the trio robbed 14 German banks, stealing more than â,¬1-million (,23-million, R8,2-million).
A bus operator in Britain is road-testing sheep urine as a way of cutting pollution, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday. Stagecoach has fitted a tank to a bus in Winchester, southern England, which sprays urine into the exhaust fumes to reduce nitrous oxide emissions.
”And so it all starts again. New season, new faces and new expectations after the usual bout of sulking, slandering and speculating. Clearly, not much has changed in South African rugby since last year’s Boks topped the charts for a few weeks.” Rob Davies looks at what this weekend’s rugby Test really means.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: One of Hotel Rwanda‘s agendas is to slam the West’s discreet non-involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, writes Xan Brooks.
Finance ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations will try to reach agreement on Friday on a British-American proposal to cancel billions of dollars in debt owed by the world’s poorest countries. The deal would cover 18 nations eligible for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
Ethiopia’s government has rejected international condemnation of a police crackdown on demonstrators angered over a disputed election, holding opposition politicians responsible for violence that has left at least 27 people dead. International donors have condemned the violence.
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) has ruled in favour of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and its use of the word ”Tshwane” in television broadcasts. The commission found that the use of the word did not contravene the broadcasting code of conduct.
A search is on for a lion reportedly on the loose on Johannesburg streets, West Rand police said on Thursday. Inspector Karen Jacobs, spokesperson for the Honeydew police station, said three residents had reported either seeing or hearing a lion in the Rietfontein area.
South Africa’s only listed mobile telecommunications operator, MTN Group, had a 45% rise in its adjusted headline earnings per share for the full year ended March 2005 to 366,6 cents, from an adjusted Heps of 253,1 cents reported in 2004, the group said on Thursday. Its subscriber base grew by 50% to 14,3-million in six countries.